Bebe Moore Campbell

by 72 Hour Hold

  “That’s great,” I said, sounding to myself as automatic as a stamp machine. There was no place in me to absorb good news, at least not someone else’s.

  Bethany didn’t seem to notice; she was spilling over with the excitement and happiness elicited by her recent reversal of fortune. She wasn’t really listening to me. She wanted to plow ahead with the retelling of her miracle. That’s what we do, I thought. If we mothers of the unstable survive our children’s madness, we examine it, dissect it, and put it back together, embellishing and polishing whatever good we can extract, presenting that semiprecious stone to an audience we hope will not judge us. How brave and pitiful we are.

  “I thought the mania would never break. It just had such a hold on her. And then the drugs too. To tell you the truth, I think it was the drugs that brought her here. I’ve never seen such despair in all my life. She didn’t get out of the bed for three days straight. I know she was thinking about suicide. I kept talking and talking and talking. You know,” she said, giving me a cursory glance, “saying all the things they taught us in support group that I never thought would work. Only finally it did, and she told me she wanted to come in.”

  “So she’s not on a hold?”

  “Voluntary.”

  Meaning she could walk out of the Weitz Center whenever she got good and ready. I turned away from Bethany. Didn’t want her to see the doubt shining in my eyes.

  “That’s just wonderful,” I said, fiddling with the strap of my purse.

  “You just don’t know. Well, of course you do.” It came to her then, a reality bite in the midst of her spiel. “What are you doing here?”

  “My daughter had a little episode.”

  “Oh, no! She was doing so well. This is probably just a blip on the radar. She’ll get right back on track.”

  “Yeah.” She didn’t want to hear the details, didn’t want my sadness to bring her down. I understood.

  “Listen, I’ve got to get upstairs.”

  Bethany got on the elevator, and I went out the front door.

  The traffic on La Cienega Boulevard was mercifully swift, and whatever music was playing on the radio blended in with my thoughts. I didn’t sing along. My nose was still clogged with the sterile hospital odor. I rolled down my window and let the breeze clear my mind.

  My house seemed wintry once I was inside. Even after the heat had been on for more than an hour I was still trembling, sitting on the sofa wrapped up in a blanket I couldn’t even feel. There were things that needed doing. I was hungry, for starters. The phone rang several times; I couldn’t make myself answer it. The sofa had claimed me. I watched television with the remote in my hands, click, click, clicking away.

  AFTER ABOUT AN HOUR, THE PHONE BEGAN RINGING AGAIN.

  “Hello.” My voice sounded strange even to my ears, the voice of some escapee, lost in the swamp, trying to rise from the depths of scum and quicksand to reclaim her humanity.

  “Keri?”

  I had to crawl through mud to connect to that voice, wipe away the sludge in my eyes, clear my throat.

  “It’s Orlando. How are you doing?”

  His name was a whiff of fragrance, a snatch of a dance tune.

  “I’m …” A throat full of tears. It would be dangerous to speak. “I’m okay,” I said finally.

  “I was wondering if we could get together, maybe talk a little bit.”

  I thought of Pretty Young Thing, the way she had stamped her feet and pursed her lips. “Oh, you still talk to grown women,” I said.

  He laughed. “You’re not going to hold that against me, are you?”

  “Let’s put it this way: It’s been duly recorded.”

  Orlando laughed again. “Yeah, that was a mistake. I was just lonely. Guess you don’t get lonely.”

  The fast girl in me, eager once and wet, was draped in black. Flirting is a foreign tongue to a mourner.

  “Orlando,” I said, and then paused to wait out the crack in my voice that was threatening to undo me.

  “You don’t sound good, baby. Is something wrong?” He didn’t give me a chance to answer, or even to think. “I’m coming over there.”

  Instinct took over. “Yes. Please.”

  Or maybe it was just plain old desire, pushing everything else out of the way.

  6

  ORLANDO FILLED UP MY DOORWAY, AND HIS EYES SEEMED to read my mind. We reached out at the same time and touched each other like two blind people. His hands pressed against my back; my fingers gripped his shoulders. The image of Pretty Young Thing popped into my mind, but I didn’t have the energy to hold a grudge. After a few minutes, he pulled away and held me out in front of him. “Trina’s sick again.”

  “Yeah.”

  He led me to my family room sofa, and we both sat down. “Is she in the hospital?”

  I nodded.

  “When did she go?”

  “Today.”

  I explained what had happened, without elaborating. I didn’t have to.

  “You know what you need?”

  I let him talk me into the idea, sell it to me in a slow, patient way, even though I had already acquiesced in my mind, and both of us knew it. He waited while I put on a warm-up suit, and then we drove to a park on the edge of Beverly Hills. There was just enough light from the streetlamp that we didn’t break our necks as we made our way onto a circular running path.

  The track was half a mile long. Orlando was beside me when we started out but quickly distanced himself. Initially, I was walking as he ran. He doubled back and gave me a shove.

  “Run, girl!”

  So I did. It hurt at first, not so much in my legs as the breathing and knowing that there was so much ground to cover, such a hard row to hoe. Then I settled in, concentrating less on what lay ahead and more on the step I was taking.

  Orlando had a smooth, easy gait, and he was fast. He ran like a man who got joy from the wind in his face. In certain spots, where there were only dim shadows, he was almost invisible, his dark skin blending into the night. I lost sight of him. “Orlando,” I called.

  “I’m right here,” he said, touching my shoulder. “You all right? When’s the last time you ran?”

  “It’s been a while. I get on the treadmill, though, every morning.”

  “Yeah, but that ain’t like running in the open. This is better for you, baby, especially when you have something on your mind. It helps you to focus.”

  He reached out, squeezed my arm, and took off.

  I went around six times; Orlando completed ten rounds. Both of us were sweaty and panting when we finished. And hungry.

  “There’s some turkey chili at home,” I said.

  “Your chili?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He grinned. “Maybe we’ll pick up some fries to go with it.”

  We debated about which fries we should get and ended up at an all-night deli in the Marina. We polished them off in the car.

  At my house Orlando ate two bowls of chili, pushed back the chair from my breakfast room table, and said, “Now I need to go running again.”

  “Everything I cook is low-fat,” I said. “You’re my diet buster, buying French fries.”

  “Aw, baby, you look good.” He reached across the table and took my hand, rubbed each one of my fingers. “How are you feeling?”

  “A lot better. Thanks for taking me out.”

  He looked at the clock on my kitchen wall. It was after eleven. “What are you doing tomorrow?” I asked. Questions about Orlando’s day had to be posed carefully. Any references to work or auditions had to be introduced by him.

  “I’m looping early.”

  Orlando’s voice-over work was his bread and butter. His was the voice of several cartoon characters. He announced for radio ads and even filled in background crowd voices. In past years the work, along with a few television guest spots, had given him a decent income, but he hadn’t booked a show in a while, and the last time we’d spoken, even the voice-over jobs seemed to have dri
ed up.

  “Oh, that’s great.”

  He stiffened. “I still do work, you know. Looping isn’t a cause for celebration.”

  “Orlando—”

  “The has-been actor still gets jobs.”

  Los Angeles: City of Fragile Egos.

  “Orlando—”

  “I’m not as big-time as your ex-husband, but I still work.”

  “You’re not a has-been, and I’m not coming to your pity party. I’ve got one of my own to attend. And as far as Clyde is concerned—”

  He leaned across the table and grabbed my hand. “All right. I’m sorry. Party canceled. Both of them. Okay?”

  He kept rubbing my hand, making circles on my palm. After a while, we both got up and sat down on the couch.

  The telephone rang.

  “You have a collect call from—”

  I immediately visualized Trina, wearing a green gown, pacing the hallway of the hospital, the pay phone receiver in her hand.

  “—it’s your mother.”

  The voice was thin, hoarse, but I knew it instantly. Gone was the vocal dexterity necessary for midnight howling and predawn screaming. On the other end of the line was an older, wiser woman, entering her second decade of sobriety. She went to meetings now and memorized slogans and prayers, ambled through life twelve steps at a time. My mother wanted to make amends. She was in dire need of my touch, my benevolence. And, if I could spare it, a little extra cash.

  “Will you accept the charges?”

  And just that quickly, whatever kindness had been deposited in my spiritual account evaporated.

  “No.”

  If Ma Missy had been alive, she would have shaken her head, admonished me for my meanness, reminded me that the woman on the other end of the line was still my mother. “She’s trying, Keri,” Ma Missy would have said. As if trying in the present erased the years of not trying that had comprised my childhood. If Ma Missy had been sitting in my kitchen when my mother’s call came, we would have argued. Although she’d protected me from my mother when I was a child and had even evicted her from her home, Ma Missy would always be her champion for the simple reason that my mother was her daughter. She could forgive her everything; that’s the nature of motherhood. I, on the other hand, was a wronged child. And without Ma Missy to guilt-trip me into submission, my baser instincts took over.

  Not that I hadn’t spoken to my mother in the past. The call that came right after Thanksgiving, eleven or twelve years ago, when she was fresh out of the first rehab that had ever really taken hold and I was young enough to believe in a new beginning—I took that one. Talked for hours. Listened to her apologies, her tears. Cried some of my own. I flew back to Atlanta during a sweltering August. We went to lunch, to church, got our hair done, and shopped at the outlet mall. She borrowed a friend’s car and drove me to the airport and cried again when I left.

  She visited LA when torrential rains obliterated the sky. We went to a dripping Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and, given a sunshiny reprieve, toured Disneyland. The two of us did every mall in the city and some in the suburbs, went to the movies, and sat up late at night watching television and talking. She told me she was sorry for all the pain she’d caused me, said she was proud of the woman and mother I’d become. She cried; oh, how she cried! Before she went home, I made up my mind to forgive her.

  And then she fell in love. At sixty-three, when she should have been prepared to devote her entire life to apologizing to me for the pitiful mother she’d been, she met a man. “In recovery, just like me.” They had so much in common, right down to their tiny fixed incomes. Once again, I was replaced.

  Abandonment redux.

  “Your mother?” Orlando asked, when I sat back on the sofa.

  “Yes. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

  In the past Orlando had stood squarely on the side of rapprochement. But then, his mama had been good to him.

  “My baby’s getting it from all sides. Come here, girl.”

  His hand was warm on the back of my neck. I let him kiss me, and then I kissed him back. We kissed some more, and we touched some more. My body was twitching, all that heat inside me struggling and pushing, yearning for someplace to go. I pulled away from him.

  “Are you sleeping with that girl?”

  “What girl?”

  “The little jailbait mama you were hanging with at the restaurant.”

  “I only went out with her twice.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “No.”

  I looked at him.

  “I didn’t sleep with her.” He started laughing.

  “She turned you down, didn’t she?” My turn to laugh.

  “Yeah, she turned me down after she saw me talking to you. Told me it was obvious that we were involved. I had it made until I ran into you. Who have you been sleeping with?”

  “Oh, let me try to remember their names.”

  I stood up first. And then he followed me. My sheets were cool, fresh. His body was familiar, strong. His heat warmed me. We knew the best position for both of us. My crying didn’t throw him. He didn’t let it throw me. I could feel him bearing down, pushing past all tears, taking me with him, claiming me all over again.

  “So, it’s you and me, right?” he said, just before we fell asleep.

  I thought about Pretty Young Thing draping herself all over Orlando. I thought about all the faceless Pretty Young Things in the world. He knows me, I thought. He knows everything about me and about Trina. I thought about PJ: closed my eyes and saw his grin, saw his face, so sad sometimes he worried me. Did Orlando ever see that sad face?

  “All this back-and-forth, break up and make up… . We need to think about hooking it up.”

  The picture that formed in my mind was the same one as always. I saw Clyde, his bags packed, walking out. Then Clyde’s face changed and it was Orlando heading for the door, leaving me alone, bereft. A family that included a man who stayed put was a dream that had exploded in my face a long time ago. I wouldn’t risk that pain again. “Jumping the broom” to the land of matrimony wasn’t in my future.

  “I’ll think about it.” It was what I always said.

  7

  WE MADE LOVE AGAIN AT DAWN, THEN DOZED UNTIL WE were awakened by a buzzing sound from Orlando’s PalmPilot. I felt his kisses after he left, one on my forehead and one on my cheek. Maybe it was their wetness that kept me awake. Maybe something else.

  The morning came with clear skies, birds chirping, and a fist called Depression that crashed into my skull. Already, there were grooves in my brain where it fit. I pulled the covers up and waited, trying to remember the feel of Orlando’s legs across my thighs, but that memory had faded. No use running, nowhere to hide. More than the blows, the familiarity made me go limp, give up. The way the thing called my name. So seductive. Good morning, heartache; wasn’t that the way the song went?

  Mean D was ruthless but not creative. The methodology was fairly predictable. Out of nowhere the inevitable masochistic questions insinuated themselves in my brain. If I had done this … If I hadn’t done that … Nothing is as resilient as a mother’s guilt. It’s that trick birthday candle that keeps flickering back on no matter how hard you blow. Only a few hours into a seventy-two-hour hold and already the guilt— ancient, primordial maybe, but so maternal—had begun stabbing me in all my vital organs. Months of reading books about mental illness, months of support group, of psychotherapy, of assiduously learning that Trina’s problem was not of my making (all together now: “I didn’t cause it, and I can’t cure it!”) was flung right out of my consciousness against a bleak sky. The jazz of my present existence scatted only one refrain: WhatdidIdowrongwhatdidIdowrongwhatdidIdowrong?

  The possibilities made up a list as endless as a cheap wine hangover. Was I absolutely sure that I’d smoked my last and final cigarette at least six months before conceiving Trina, the way I liked to recall, or was nicotine still floating through my system at the moment of conceptio
n? Forget about nicotine. What about the occasional joint I’d been so fond of? Could I pinpoint my last high? Why had I been unable to give up coffee when I was pregnant? Had that caffeine rush given me a jittery fetus who later became …? The questions gave birth to more questions, and my masochism escalated in brutality. Why had I been in such a damn hurry to get back to work after Trina was born? Why hadn’t I stayed home with my daughter until she was five, six, ten, eighteen? How well had I known her babysitters? Which one of them had smacked her, locked her in a closet, touched her private parts?

  The if onlys followed the questions. If only I’d breast-fed longer. If only I hadn’t sent her to that first school with the mean teacher. If only I’d tried to work harder on my marriage. If only I hadn’t been so busy.

  High-stepping through my mind next came the parade of other people’s Perfect Kids. The infants, offspring of my friends and family: always cooing, always adorable. The toddlers with their new teeth and new words, running to embrace life. The preteens. The teenagers. Ah, worst of all, the finished products of twenty-one. My first cousin’s Princeton graduate: perfect. My neighbor’s budding actress: perfect. My hairstylist’s son, working on his master’s at USC: perfect. All the perfect products of good mothers, which I, obviously, was not. What did I do wrong? It was the chorus to an unlucky song I couldn’t stop singing.

  My mother never sang that song, I thought. She was remorseless, a woman who did her dirt and kept on stepping. When I told her once that giving birth to me didn’t make her my mother, she had shrugged her shoulders. Why couldn’t I be more like her?

  Somehow, when I faced these moments, I always wanted to talk with Clyde. He alone could bear witness. He alone could exonerate me.

  The ringing telephone was a stay of execution.

  “Hey, girl. You were on my mind.”

  Mattie’s early-morning greeting, cheerful as it was, didn’t abate my blues.

  I told her about Trina.

  “Look, she’s had months of being on meds and going to therapy. She wants to go to school, to get her life back. Trina’s not going to jeopardize what’s she’s built for herself. Don’t you think she likes feeling normal?”